The Core Components of the Rule of Law

THE CORE COMPONENTS OF THE RULE OF LAW

CONSTITUTIONALISM
The existence of a constitution is widely seen as a necessary prerequisite of both
democracy and the Rule of Law. One of the rites of passage for nations moving
from colonialism to independence, whether in the 1780s or the 1960s, or from
absolutist rule to democratic rule, has been the conclusion of a formal written
constitution. Such a formal document (or set of documents, in the English
case) is seen as necessary for the articulation of the people’s will, or the general
“consent of the governed,” which is, as we have discussed, the basis of any
government’s claim to validity.

Constitutions then are meant to be the fundamental statement of what a group

of people gathered together as citizens of a particular nation view as the basic
rules and values which they share and to which they agree to bind themselves.
The significance of a constitution is that once it is ratified by a democratic process,
which confirms that it is supported by “we the people,” in the initial phrase of
the U.S. Constitution, it then serves both as an architectural blueprint for the
organization of the institutions of that government and as the standard by which
any subsequent actions of the government may be checked to ensure their validity.
The constitutional standard of validity is inherently that of respect for the consent
of the governed.

As expressed by Professor John Norton Moore:

Constitutions should embody the fundamental compact with the

people—such constitutions should serve as the highest form of law to
which all other laws and governmental actions must conform. As such,
constitutions should embody the fundamental precepts of a democratic
society rather than serving to incorporate ever-changing laws more
appropriately dealt with by statute. Similarly, governmental structures
and actions should seriously conform with constitutional norms, and
constitutions should not be mere ceremonial or aspirational documents.1

One of the conceptual difficulties in fulfilling the mandate of constitutionalism

as an element in the establishment of the Rule of Law is how to ascertain whether

1
John N. Moore, “The Rule of Law: An Overview” (paper presented at the first U.S/Soviet Conference on
‘the Rule of Law’ held in Moscow and Leningrad, 19-23 March 1990).

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THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

the constitution as written actually has the support and consent of the governed.
Thus one of the subsidiary requirements of a constitution is that it can itself be
changed, or amended. Indeed, the revolutionary principle articulated in the U.S.
Declaration of Independence remains that “whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends [securing the inalienable rights of man], it is
the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”2

Far short of such a revolutionary moment, changing circumstances or political

mores can nevertheless call for a change in a constitution, but such change must
itself be according to the rules for amendment prescribed in the document or
fall short of the Rule of Law doctrine. Certainly the constitution cannot be
changed by the government itself, or by some process that does not credibly
attempt to consult with the “governed” to obtain their consent. Hence the
amendment process of the U.S. Constitution is an elaborate sequence of
consultation with both state governments and the national Congress. (Despite
its complexity, it has nonetheless worked over a dozen times to incorporate twenty-
six amendments.)

The absence of any credible effort to consult with the governed in the
constitution-writing or amendment process is fatal to the goal of
constitutionalism, even if the document itself might pass some aesthetic or
intellectual test of adequacy as a governing instrument. A case in point from
Asian history, according to the scholar Kichisaburo Nakamura, was the
promulgation of the Meiji Constitution in 1889. In describing the actions of the
Imperial government in secretly promulgating an acceptable formal constitution
“before the idea of having a British-type democratic constitution had penetrated
too deeply into the minds of the public,” he concluded that the constitution so
issued, without consultation of the people and even without their awareness of
the process, was a “false modern constitution.”3

As the case of Marbury v Madison revealed early in the life of the U.S. republic,
the doctrine of constitutionalism has implications in a democracy for the role
and power of both the legislature and the judiciary. As Professor Richard Fallon
has noted, it is an important point to explain why legislation passed by current

2
Declaration of Independence, Preamble.
3
Kichisaburo Nakamura, The Formation of Modern Japan (Honolulu: East West Press Center, 1964) 56-62.

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 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

majorities in “politically accountable legislatures” with a “prima facie claim to

legitimate lawmaking authority” must nonetheless yield to “a Constitution initially
ratified more than two hundred years ago …”4

The answer lies in the notion that a nation gathers itself for the task of “higher
lawmaking” at certain points in its history, namely when it undertakes to write or
amend the constitution.5 At other times, even though the legislature and the
executive have been granted powers to govern consistent with that constitution,
they have not been granted powers to act inconsistently with it. In the structure
that has emerged in the United States since the Marbury case, it is the duty of the
judiciary to make the determination of whether either of the other two branches
has crossed that crucial boundary.

LAW GOVERNS THE GOVERNMENT

The notion that the constitution controls the actions of the government is
extended further by the doctrine of the Rule of Law. In making statutory law,
the legislature is bound by constitutional limits. Then the statutes themselves
must bind all of the government. As discussed earlier, this idea that the
government itself is bound by law is the heart of the Western contribution to
the doctrine of the Rule of Law.

It is perhaps here that the contrast between the Western concern for limits on
governmental power and the Confucian confidence in the benevolence of
enlightened rulers is best highlighted. Repeatedly, in discourses on the Rule of
Law, the underlying theme is that we must be wary of government, acting through
its human officials, lest arbitrary or unfair treatment of one individual or a class
of individuals negates basic human rights or notions of fairness and equal
treatment of all citizens. Bound up in that Western concern are preconceptions—
vital to the notion of democracy in the West—that individual rights and equitable
treatment of all individuals are necessary elements.

It is also here, however, that a shared view of human nature may be perceived.
As the French scholar Blandine Kriegel has argued, the proper understanding of
the liberal tradition in Western philosophy is that the liberal state should act as a
neutral arbiter among individuals who, acting in their own self interest, might so

4
Richard H. Fallon Jr., “ ‘The Rule of Law’ as a Concept in Constitutional Discourse,” Columbia Law
Review, vol. 97, no. 1 (January 1997), 11.
5
Argument by Bruce Ackerman cited in “ ‘The Rule of Law’ as a Concept in Constitutional Discourse,”
Ibid., 11.

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THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

pursue selfish aims as to violate the rights of others.6 Multiplied throughout

society, this becomes what Hobbes called the “war of all against all.”7

The Confucian confidence in the enlightened ruler, and the more modern Asian
corollary of confidence in a well-trained bureaucracy (shared, incidentally, by at
least the French, among Westerners) should be viewed as a different answer to
the same problem: individuals acting alone may act badly or selfishly, and must
be restrained by some authority that can be relied on to pursue the broader
public good.

The difference in prescriptions for this problem is that the Western notion of
the Rule of Law places a higher value on procedural limits on governmental
actors, because they too are human, and less reliance on any assumption that
enlightened leaders can be identified and placed in power, whether through
hereditary, military, meritocratic or electoral systems.

The concept that the government itself is ruled by law is rich in subsidiary
requirements, but they can safely be summarized by the assertion that “the Rule
of Law is the supremacy of legal authority. The law should rule officials, including
judges, as well as ordinary citizens.”8

Among the numerous subsidiary requirements entailed in this concept, the most
important may be the notion that individuals must have recourse to some
procedural method to challenge the actions of government. This must be true
in all spheres: legislative, executive and judicial. Obviously, there is no substantive
content to the notion that government is ruled by law if there is no method of
testing a specific governmental action to see if it adheres to law. Thus mechanisms
are required to effectuate that option for individual citizens:

If the legislature passes a law, it must be possible for a citizen to

challenge the constitutionality of that law;

If the executive takes an action, it must be possible for a citizen to

challenge that action in terms of its legality or constitutionality; and

6
Blandine Kriegel, The State and the Rule of Law (Princeton University Press, 1995), passim.
7
Fallon, op cit., p. 7; Thomas Hobbes (see J.N. Moore, op.cit.).
8
Ibid., 8.

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 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

If the judiciary takes an action, it must be possible for a citizen to

appeal that action; if appeals are fully exhausted to the highest judicial
level, there must be some mechanism for seeking a new law that
would override the existing law, as interpreted and enforced by the
courts.

While the specifics of those mechanisms can differ from one system to another,
in every case, this crucial aspect of the Rule of Law system leads to another core
element of the Rule of Law: the requirement of an independent judiciary.

AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY
Central to every discussion of the Rule of Law is the insistence on the necessity
of an independent judiciary. As Ibrahim Shihata, General Counsel of the World
Bank, defines it:

In modern constitutional law, the “the rule of law” translates into the
principles of law-abiding governmental powers, independent courts,
transparency of legislation, and judicial review of the constitutionality
of laws and other norms of lower order.9

An independent judiciary endowed with the power of judicial review of legislative

and executive acts is critical to the Rule of Law because the judiciary is the
institution that enforces the two key mechanisms that ensure the Rule of Law:
separation of powers, and checks and balances among the different powers.

As Professor Moore has argued:

An independent judiciary is a critical component of the principle of

separation of powers … Because of the great importance of judicial
review as a central mechanism for constitutional enforcement and for
maintenance of the Rule of Law … I believe that it should be considered
a fundamental principle in its own right. Indeed, no principle in the
American experience has been more important in maintaining the
integrity of the major constitutional underpinnings of the Rule of Law
than has the principle of independent judicial review.10

9
Ibrahim F.I. Shihata, “Complementary Reform: Essays on Legal, Judicial and Other Institutional Reforms
Supported by the World Bank,” Kluwer Law International (1997), 5.
10
J. N. Moore, op.cit., p. 8.

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THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

If the major tenet of Montesquieu’s approach to constitutional-ism is accepted

(that powers must be separated so that each acts as a check on the other), then
the judiciary is the enforcer of that concept. It is the one branch of government
that is not an active initiator of laws or programs. It is the branch that resolves
cases or controversies brought before it by adversarial parties. At least in American
jurisprudence, a court’s first duty is to make certain that it has the jurisdiction to
reach the particular case brought before it, and that the case is indeed a live or
actual dispute, not a theoretical or hypothetical dispute. If those thresholds are
reached, then its duty is to impartially ascertain the applicable law and enforce it
on the litigating parties.

If the resolution of the case involves rebuking either the legislature (for passage
of an unconstitutional law) or the executive (for improper actions outside the
law or misapplication of the law), then that is the court’s duty. Moreover, as to
the checks and balances mechanism, it is the judiciary which must resolve the
disputes that arise between those who perform the other functions of government
(legislative and executive) in those cases where the dispute is about the correct
division of power between them.

Generally in the literature about separation of powers and the mechanism of

checks and balances to limit abuse of power, it is assumed that the American
model of three separate and independent branches of government is best suited
to this purpose. But it is interesting to note that in other major Western systems,
commonly referred to as parliamentary, there is a blending of the legislative and
the executive, without apparent harm to democracy or the Rule of Law.

That is, in parliamentary systems the top officials of the executive branch, usually
a prime minister and ministers, are members of or direct participants in the
debates of the legislature. Through party discipline, the executive branch chooses
the initiatives that are undertaken in the parliament and ensures that only those
acts the executive agrees to are passed. More important, at any moment when
the executive branch loses political control over a majority of the members of
the legislature, it is the legislature that then has the power to, in effect, discharge
the executive by a vote of “no confidence,” which forces formation of a new
executive (prime minister and cabinet). Calling or holding an election—direct
recourse to the people—decides who should be the executive. The executive, in
turn, can effectively discharge the legislature by calling a parliamentary election
to ask the people who should continue to serve in the legislative branch.11 Thus
the powers of the two branches are in fact commingled, not separate.

11
Note that the French Fifth Republic system devised by President Charles de Gaulle is a hybrid of the two
types, but in practice its functioning is consistent with these observations about parliamentary regimes.

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 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

By contrast, it is consistently true that all the major Western legal systems have
an independent judiciary, clearly separated from the other functions of
government, and incapable of being discharged by either of the other two
branches.12 It is hard to conceive of an organizational scheme that could be
otherwise, yet still achieve the purpose ascribed to the judiciary of ensuring that
every actor in the society, including the government and its officials, are subject
to the Rule of Law.

Here again the concept of an independent judiciary is rich in subsidiary

requirements and characteristics. To achieve real independence for the judiciary,
practical mechanisms must be put in place to support it, and societal norms
must defend it. Again, as Professor Moore concisely states these practical
requirements:

A genuinely independent judiciary, of course, requires not only a doctrine

of judicial review but also scrupulous protection of the independence
of the judiciary in form and in fact. Details of appointment, tenure,
salary, status, training and removal must all be resolved to preserve and
strengthen that independence. Similarly, the selection of the judiciary
must not be on a partisan basis and should ensure the selection of the
most qualified legal experts. And the legal profession, as well as the
government and society as a whole, must internalize the independence
of the judiciary and the important reasons for it.13

It is generally assumed that among those practical measures, life tenure for judges
is the most important, since it is the best mechanism to insulate a judge from
external pressures, which might cause a deviation from impartial application of
the law, whether the pressures originate from other government officials, the
litigants or from external parties with an interest in the court’s decisions. But it
is common sense to observe that matters of compensation, working conditions
and intangibles like the prestige or respect accorded judges are all factors in the
equation that determines how truly independent a judiciary is.

The question of societal respect for the judiciary relates to an additional major
reason for the importance of judicial independence. For the Rule of Law to

12
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s failed “court packing” effort is proof that the U.S. Executive cannot, even
in effect, discharge the Justices of the Supreme Court by diluting their power.
13
J.N. Moore, op. cit., p. 10.

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THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

prevail in a society, there must be a general public perception that law is fairly
applied to all, without political, religious, or ethnic favoritism or corrupt
inducements. The goal of equal and fair application of the law is itself one of
the core necessary components of the Rule of Law.

LAW MUST BE FAIRLY AND CONSISTENTLY APPLIED

This simplest of axioms about the core requirements of the Rule of Law may be
the most complex to achieve. The prevalence of geographic, ethnic and other
tribalism in most societies is a breeding ground for favoritism based on regional,
religious, racial, ethnic and other distinctions. Even in the supposed melting pot
of the United States, a litigant from New York might have some apprehension
about facing a court in Alabama, and the element of racial considerations plainly
has not been erased from the U.S. judicial system.

Yet the mandate of fairness is critical. Public confidence in the Rule of Law can
only be sustained if the perception is wide and deep that there is no favoritism
based on such distinctions. On this point, there seems to be no theoretical
dispute between Asian and Western views. In the Declaration of Delhi enunciated
in 1959 after an International Congress of Jurists, comprising nearly 200 judges
and lawyers from 53 nations, it was concluded that a government must not:

… discriminate in its laws in respect of individuals, classes of persons,

or minority groups on the ground of race, religion, sex or other such
reasons not affording a proper basis for making a distinction between
human beings, classes, or minorities …14

Achievement of this lofty goal of equal and fair treatment of all is elusive, but
specific mechanisms can be identified that are important in the effort. First,
governments must ensure that the apparatus of government itself is inclusive
of all groups within the society and is structured in ways that promote equitable
treatment of all. This cannot be achieved merely by the pronouncements of a
formal constitution. It must be made real by practical, incremental measures
that address the workings of all three branches or functions of government:
legislative, executive and judicial.

With respect to the legislative function, the right of suffrage is at the core. All
citizens, without respect to ethnicity, religion, gender or other characteristics,

14
Declaration of Delhi, Clause III, (a).

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 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

must be allowed to participate in elections and have a reasonable expectation

that their votes will be weighed equally with those of other individuals.

The nexus between “free and fair elections” and the “the Rule of Law” is that
legislatures are elected to act in a representative capacity, passing laws that are
supposed to embody those laws that would be passed by all citizens acting in
concert, if it were practical to assemble all citizens on all such legislative questions.

Absent access to the ballot, and a reasonably equitable weighting of the worth
of each vote, there is no reason for any citizen deprived of an equally weighted
vote to assume that his or her views will in fact be represented in the legislature.
Worse, experience suggests that they will not be.

Whether or not there must be a literal standard of “one man, one vote” as
enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court,15 the require-ments of the Rule of Law
are that all citizens (taking into account reasonable voting qualifications such as
having reached the age of maturity and not having forfeited citizenship through
felonious actions) should have the right to vote and, flowing from that right, the
expectation that the legislature and the executive will be proportionately responsive
to their views.

As for the executive, one key requirement for the Rule of Law is open access to
the positions and appointments of the executive branch. In most governments,
whether democratic or not, the executive branch is the locus of the most
government jobs, and therefore the focus of those who seek “spoils.” In many
developing economies, the government is a major employer if not the premier
employer. In order to promote respect for the Rule of Law, the public perception
must be that those executive positions are acquired based on some system of
merit, rather than on ethnic, religious or other discriminatory methods of
selection.

In the United States, the history of civil service reform has been that of a battle
between reformers who seek to insulate the positions in the vast U.S. executive
bureaucracy from political influence and politicians who view the correct
definition of democracy as requiring adherence to the will of the people as
expressed in the latest election—the view succinctly captured in the famous
phrase “to the victors belong the spoils.”16

15
Baker v Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962).
16
A view attributed to Andrew Jackson and most 19th century U.S. Presidents, but which spawned the civil
service reform movement later in the century.

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THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

It is important to note that in other societies, both Western and Asian, the concept
of a meritocratic bureaucracy has had a stronger hold than in the United States.
In both France and Japan, for example, there is a well-established tradition of
strong bureaucracies to which access is determined almost strictly on merit, as
defined by performance at elite educational institutions. In turn, there has
generally been public support for those bureaucracies, based on the perception
that they were able and qualified to do their jobs. That support is consistent
with the argument that meritocratic selection is important to ensure popular
respect for the Rule of Law. The stresses of recent times, and alleged excesses
by the bureaucrats, have reduced public support for the established bureaucracies
of both Japan and France in roughly parallel fashion, a trend that deserves
attention in the context of support for the Rule of Law.

Finally, the operations of the judicial branch must promote confidence in the
Rule of Law. Police, prosecutors and judges must be drawn from all elements of
the society, so that adverse results cannot be viewed through the prism of
exclusion from the system. In an important counterweight to the concept of
judicial independence, judges too must be subjected to some form of outside
control to ensure against abuses. In large part, this is typically achieved by an
appellate structure. If a court of original jurisdiction makes unreasonable or
legally unfounded decisions, appeal to the next level should be available to rectify
those mistakes. In complex areas of the law where there is genuine disagreement
among different courts on the right outcomes, as frequently occurs among the
twelve U.S. federal circuit courts of appeals, then appeal to a supreme tribunal
should be available to resolve the question and establish the legal rule that governs
that question.

To the extent that the appellate structure is insufficient to guarantee a judiciary

that performs well and deserves respect, the other necessary mechanisms include
those that insure the selection of judges based on merit (as in the case of the
executive) and those that permit judges to be removed for cause—notwithstanding
the presumption that judges should be granted life tenure to insulate them from
transient political pressures. There are a number of variants in these procedures,
but in each case the consistent aim is to ensure that the judiciary remains
independent while guarding against any arbitrary exercise of power by the judiciary
itself, or by any solitary judge.

An additional mechanism to support the Rule of Law and to ensure public support
for the workings of the judiciary is the jury system. It is useful to note the device
of the jury system precisely because it displays the differences of views that exist

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 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

among Western legal systems. The jury system is seen as crucial to the Anglo-
Saxon systems of justice, and was adumbrated by the phrase in the Magna Carta
that guaranteed against governmental actions adverse to an individual without
the sanction of his peers. Tocqueville, the unparalleled observer and admirer of
U.S. society, despite being French, praised the jury system highly, as the
quintessence of democracy:

[the jury system] places the real direction of society in the hands of the
governed…and not in that of the government … [It] raises the people
itself… to the bench of judges [and] consequently invests the people …
with the direction society.17

That said, it must be admitted that the jury system is not specifically necessary to
the Rule of Law, else the European civil law systems (among others) that do not
feature it could not be said to be examples of the Rule of Law. What is worthy
of consideration is the question of how mechanisms can be established, with or
without the jury system, to ensure that the application of the law by the executive
and judicial branches remains consistent with a broad popular view of justice in
particular cases.

The assumption behind the jury system is that one cannot be sure whether the
“people” would consent to a particular application of the law without consulting
a representative segment of the citizenry. Whether that is in fact necessary for
the Rule of Law, or what other mechanisms might exist besides the jury system
to allow that consultation with the citizenry at large, are important questions to
answer.

LAW IS TRANSPARENT AND ACCESSIBLE TO ALL

Transparency
Transparency has two major components. First, laws must be sufficiently
understandable and broadly published so that individuals have some fair warning
of what conduct might provoke sanctions from the government, and also so
that they can insist upon their legal rights in a timely fashion and have them
respected by other parties who likewise have reasonable access to the existence
and meaning of laws.

17
Tocqueville, quoted by California Chief Justice Bird, in Rose Elizabeth Bird, “The Rule of Law as an
Enduring Principle” (speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on 3 June 1983), Beverly Hills Bar
Association Journal, vol. 17, no. 4 (1983), 219-226.

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The philosopher Freidrich Hayek framed transparency as requiring “… that

government in all its actions [be] bound by rules fixed and announced
beforehand—rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the
authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances.”18 Likewise, in
contemporary times, the World Bank has defined the Rule of Law as requiring,
inter alia, “a set of rules which are known in advance.”19

The virtues of such transparency would seem apparent: predictability, reliability

and a general sense that the application of the law to one’s conduct will not be
arbitrary or capricious. If you know what the law is, and obey it, you should
have no reason to fear that either the government or your fellow citizens will
attempt to interfere with or limit your conduct. If you know what the law is, and
disobey it, you are forewarned that, if caught, there are specific consequences.

The second element of transparency is procedural. The process by which laws

are made ought also to be transparent. If laws are merely announced as fiat or
fait accompli by government agents, then the sense of a reasonable rationale behind
the laws may be undermined. And even if the reasonableness of a law seems
clear, a process for promulgating the law that is not open and does not allow for
participation and comment in some fashion by those who may be affected by
the law will undermine the general public support for the law. Surely, coercion
may suffice to force compliance with such edict-laws, but the “consent of the
governed” has not really been obtained in that way. Acquiescence, perhaps, but
not consent.

These plain concepts require a host of specific mechanisms to achieve. The first
component of transparency—that laws be known in advance—actually is rather
hard to achieve in practice. Simple laws like those governing traffic can be made
known easily by posting signs. And laws that affirm the moral codes long
entrenched in most societies, like the prohibition on murder or other bodily
harm to another or the prohibition against stealing, are generally presumed to be
known and understood by all in a society, absent a mental deficiency. But in a
complex, regulated economy like most today, the laws or rules governing conduct
in the business sphere—issuance and sale of securities, adherence to

18
Freidrich Hayek, The Road To Serfdom, 1944.
19
Ibrahim F.I. Shihata, “Role of the Judiciary in the Prevention and Control of Corruption” (paper presented
at the Joint Conference on ‘The Problem of Corruption: Prevention and Judicial Control’ held in Rome, Italy,
1 April 1998).

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 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

environmental protection regulations, obedience to antitrust and competition

laws—these are in fact difficult to make known in a way that ensures actual
knowledge, in advance, by all the individuals who may be engaging in conduct
that is regulated by those laws.

The answer to this dilemma is generally to insist that laws be formally published
and available to the public in predictable places. Codes that address specific
areas of the law should be published and made available on the shelves of libraries
and government buildings and on Web sites. These laws should be regularly
updated to reflect any changes that have been made by the legislative or executive
branches. Assuming such general openness and availability of laws, the legal
doctrine that then typically governs individual conduct is the “duty to inquire.”
It is not sufficient as a defense to say “I didn’t know” when some reasonable
inquiry could have given you the information needed to know the law in advance.
It is this line of reasoning that squares the familiar dictum in U.S. law that
“ignorance of the law is no excuse” with the requirement that laws be known in
advance in order to be fairly binding upon the individual.

As for the goal of procedural transparency, again there is a range of mechanisms

that can be employed to achieve this. Some are well established and
uncontroversial; others are comparatively new and continue to be debated.
Generally, the goal is for each branch or function of government to be open to
public scrutiny as it does its work. The legislature, in particular, should be open
to public view during its debates, and any proposed legislation should be
announced, published and debated for a sufficient period of time to allow
interested and potentially affected citizens to comment. In practice, there are
important details to this broad prescription.

While it is true that the formal floor proceedings of the U.S. House of
Representatives and Senate have been open to visitors in the galleries throughout
the history of the republic, it is only in the last twenty-five years that key committee
meetings have been opened to the public’s scrutiny, and even more recently that
television cameras have made the Congress’ deliberations something that a broad
range of the public throughout the country could observe. It is of interest to
note that some Congressional veterans contend that the increased transparency
of the proceedings of the U.S. Congress has led to “pandering” to transient
public emotions, a contention that implicitly endorses the notion that an
enlightened bureaucracy, either meritocratic or elected, may make better decisions
in private than if it is exposed to full public scrutiny of its actions.

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THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

In the executive branch, perhaps the most important single mechanism to insure
transparency of the law is “notice and comment rulemaking.” Such rulemaking
provides that whenever the executive branch is considering making a new rule or
regulation to implement a statute, it should publish the proposed rule in a
predictable and findable place (like the Federal Register in the United States), so
that interested parties can comment upon it. Then, those comments should be
taken into account as the agency promulgates its final rule, which again would
have to be published so that the public is on notice as to the contents of the new
rule in its final form.

Other mechanisms that have emerged in the past thirty years in the United States,
and which are beginning to be tried in other systems, include U.S. statutes such
as the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 551, and the Open Meetings Act
(“Sunshine Act”) 5 U.S.C. 552.20 These requirements that the actual deliberations
of executive branch agencies be open and the executive’s records be accessible
to the public place affirmative burdens on the government, and some argue that
they are excessive. Yet the general thrust of such openness seems required by
the Rule of Law: neither the consent of the governed nor sound laws that reflect
the rational interests of the public are likely to be achieved through rulemaking
that is hidden from the public and does not permit its participation and substantive
input.

Courts have a peculiar responsibility to be open in their proceedings for two

reasons:

First, the guarantee of procedural fairness and consistent application of the law
by courts is best insured if the proceedings are open, are recorded, and are the
subject of appeal. The right to appeal would be rendered meaningless if there
were no record or basis for establishing what the court did and its legal reasoning.

Second, at least in the common law tradition of England and the United States,
if not in the civil law traditions of continental Europe, court decisions become
the building blocks of a jurisprudence of precedents. That is, as each court
confronts a particular set of facts and tries to apply relevant law, a precedent is
set for how to deal with that type of case. As new cases appear, courts are

20
Both of these statutes are part of the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. Sec. 551-559, 60 Stat. 231
(1946). The APA is the repository of the bulk of the statutory law that governs how the U.S. bureaucracy
must conduct its business. As such, the APA is crucial to an understanding of how the “Rule of Law” is
implemented by the executive branch and the regulatory bureaucracy of the United States.

34
 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

inclined to handle them consistently with these past precedents, if the cases
appear “on point.” Such respect for precedent again contributes to the sense
that the law is predictable and not arbitrary. It is only workable if the precedents
are capable of being known, either because they were the subject of written
opinions or the deliberations of the courts in prior cases were recorded.

Accessibility
The principle of accessibility may be one of the hardest to honor in the search
for the Rule of Law. Accessibility can mean simply “capable of being understood.”
Clearly, some laws fail that test, but it is a standard that legislatures and executives
should be able to meet. More importantly, accessibility means a real chance to
participate in the law-making and law-adjudicating process and to try to vindicate
one’s rights, whether personal or economic.

The challenge of accessibility is that it requires both complex procedural

protections for individuals and financial resources. The procedural protections
take the form of various mechanisms to ensure that individuals have the right to
be heard, to “confront their accuser” in the criminal context, or to utilize
established procedures of the legislature, the executive branch and the courts to
defend or advance one’s civil rights and financial interests.

The resources are required because such access to the legal system—in any of
its parts—typically requires time and some degree of legal training or specialized
knowledge. Not every citizen possesses these, and not every individual has the
personal financial resources to hire a specialized lawyer or representative to take
on this function. Thus the responsibility falls on the legal and governmental
system itself, and on lawyers in the private bar, to provide the expertise, time and
work to afford every citizen some reasonable expectation of accessibility to the
workings of the law. All of those require financial resources. It is safe to assert
that no society has yet committed sufficient financial resources to meet this goal
in its fullest sense, even though many do have a range of legal aid, pro bono lawyer
requirements and public assistance programs intended to honor, at least in part,
this aspirational goal of accessibility. It is noteworthy that China’s new “Law on
Lawyers,” which sets forth the conditions for the practice of law in the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), imposes a pro bono requirement on all lawyers to provide
legal assistance to indigent and otherwise disadvantaged individuals, thereby
endorsing the principle of accessibility.21

21
Law of the People’s Republic of China on Lawyers, adopted by the National People’s Congress, 15 May
1996, effective 1 January 1997.

35
THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

APPLICATION OF THE LAW IS EFFICIENT AND TIMELY

The familiar aphorism in American law is that “justice delayed is justice denied.”
This is most clearly true in the criminal context, where, depending on the rules
governing pre-trial detention or release, a criminal defendant stands to be deprived
of his or her liberty for prolonged periods even before a determination of guilt
or innocence, notwithstanding the concept of the presumption of innocence
that prevails in some criminal justice systems.

In civil cases, as well, particularly in modern, fast-paced economic circumstances,

slow judicial or executive (regulatory) proceedings may render an economic interest
moot or eliminate the opportunity for an economic gain.

Yet the mandate for efficient and timely application of the law is difficult to
achieve for at least two broad reasons. First, there is again the question of
resources. Courts must be endowed with sufficient personnel and materiel to
decide cases expeditiously, and executive branch agencies likewise need resources
to decide regulatory questions or handle administrative cases that arise under
their jurisdiction. Very few judges in any system would say they have been given
enough resources, nor would they likely turn away more. Assuming decent
resources, practical management challenges must also be met. Courts must be
well administered and there must be systems of accountability to ascertain why
matters are not being resolved efficiently when they are not.

Second, some of the other values elevated by the Rule of Law are at times in
conflict with the goal of simple efficiency and rapid disposition of cases. Most
important may be the checks and balances incorporated throughout the legal
system to ensure against arbitrary or hasty decisions. Procedural rights accorded
criminal defendants and civil litigants in the course of pre-trial and trials, rights
of appeal of judicial decisions, as well as the processes in the executive branch
discussed earlier according public notice of and participation in rulemaking—all
of these are in pursuit of important Rule of Law values, but they build in time-
consuming procedures, which make the final resolution of legal cases more
lengthy, not less.

Likewise, at times there is a conflict with the basic concept of judicial

independence. Systems that pressure judges to decide cases quickly or that take
cases away from judges who ponder cases for a long time run the risk of violating
the precepts of judicial independence.

36
 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

Perhaps the most important point to make in this area is that efficiency and
timeliness in the legal system are related to the goals of fairness and equitable
treatment. There is the risk of both the reality and the perception of favoritism
in the application of the law where the courts are generally not capable of speedy
resolution of cases, because there inevitably will be pressures from those with
special power in the society—the wealthy or the politically well-connected—to
have their matters disposed of more efficiently. The lack of general efficiency
becomes a breeding ground for favoritism in the dispensing of efficient justice.

In turn, this creates a link to corruption in governmental processes, notably in

the judiciary. As General Counsel Shihata of the World Bank has noted:

“Within the judiciary, delays, low salaries and the proliferation of detailed
and archaic formalities contribute to corruption by inviting kickbacks
to be paid to expedite the process. Nepotism, connections, petty bribery
and other means of acquiring private influence and advantage through
the support administrative system damage public perceptions and do
little to advance the confidence of those outside the judiciary.”22

Corruption, sometimes itself the product of inefficient administration of justice,

then becomes the cause of further inefficiencies and costs in the administration
of justice. “Widespread and enduring corruption in the system as a whole imposes
additional costs on the society and leads to further inefficiencies in the
administration of justice. It also frustrates the legitimate expectations and trust
of the population in the justice system.”23

Inefficiency and the invitation to corruption that it entails are not limited to the
judiciary. All branches of government, particularly those in the executive branches
that deal with economic rights such as licenses, and inspections to meet various
legal requirements, whether building and housing codes or restaurant sanitation
requirements, are notorious examples of areas of government activity prone to
corruption as people seek to get the efficient—and fair—vindication of their
legal and economic rights in the face of inefficient bureaucracies.

22
Ibrahim F.I. Shihata, “Role of the Judiciary in the Prevention and Control of Corruption” (paper presented
at the Joint Conference on ‘The Problem of Corruption: Prevention and Judicial Control’ held in Rome, Italy,
1 April 1998).
23
Ibid., 3.

37
THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

Inefficiency and the potential for corruption in the judiciary are cause for a
higher level of concern, however, due to the larger Rule of Law objective that
individuals should have particular faith in the impartiality, objectivity and
independence of judges and courts. If that faith is brought into question, then
the underlying public support for the Rule of Law is instantly and significantly
damaged.

PROPERTY AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS ARE PROTECTED,

INCLUDING CONTRACTS
Since 1997 and the advent of the economic crisis in Asia, there have been intense
discussions about what reforms may be needed to remedy the deficiencies that
have been revealed in certain Asian and other emerging economies. The Rule of
Law has been regularly and strongly advocated as a core requirement of the
needed economic reform. That view has been aggressively advocated by officials
of the United States, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other
international financial institutions.24

Despite the new urgency in the tone of this discussion, there has been for the
past several decades a running debate about the role of law, and the Rule of Law,
in economic development. Already in the early years of the post-colonial,
developing nation experience, the conferences sponsored by the International
Commission of Jurists and held variously in Athens, Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos
and Bangkok, from 1955 to 1965, regularly concluded that the Rule of Law was
an important component not just of political and democratic development, but
also of economic development. Generally, these were hortatory findings,
however, with limited empirical analysis of the linkage between the two, or
itemized statements of the components of the Rule of Law relevant to economic
development.25

Moreover, those discussions reflected the strong countercurrents to the Western

notions of the Rule of Law that flowed at that time, in the context of the split

24
Charlene Barshefsky, “Trade and American Prosperity in 1999” (testimony of the United States Trade
Representative before the Senate Committee on Finance, Washington D.C., 26 January 1999).
25
The International Congress of Jurists sponsored a series of conferences on the Rule of Law in the 1950s
and 1960s. See “The Judiciary and the Legal Profession under the Rule of Law” New Delhi, India, 5-10
January 1959; “Report on the Proceedings of the South-East Asian and Pacific Conference of Jurists” Bangkok,
Thailand, 15-19 February 1965; “Executive Action and the Rule of Law,” Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, 11-15 December
1962; also including a report on conferences in Athens (June 1955) and in Lagos (April 1960).

38
 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

between the views of nations that in several cases were just relinquishing colonial
power status and those that were just achieving independent nationhood. In
those discussions, the point was frequently made that the Rule of Law appertains
to political and civil rights, whereas the social and economic welfare of their
indigent populations should be the proper focus of government officials in newly
independent nations.26

Indeed, in the post-colonial context, many held the view that the economic rights
protected by the Rule of Law, certainly in the colonial experience, were in conflict
with the goals of equitable economic growth. Land reform was a frequently
discussed example. Those who viewed redistribution of land resources as a
necessary and important step toward providing the means to indigenous people
to climb toward prosperity necessarily had a different view of the claims of
property titles than those who strictly respected such claims.27

During the 1960s and 1970s, the official development agencies of the donor
nations, notably including the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID),
pursued the notion that there was, nevertheless, a linkage between law and
development, putting official development assistance (ODA) money into the
support of various law reform, judicial training and related exercises.28 This
effort was substantial enough to have been characterized as the “law-and-
development movement,” which in turn has spawned an extensive literature
among Western academics on the question of whether the efforts to spur
economic development through legal reform have actually worked.

Given the failure in a number of developing nations to achieve rapid or sustained

economic growth, that literature has tended toward the pessimistic. Yet as one
scholar, who surveyed this literature concluded, “law-and-development
theory...and law-and-development studies...can be seen as largely a Western
academic conversation.”29 He further concluded pragmatically that the frustration
with legal reform as a mechanism to produce economic development was

26
International Commission of Jurists, “The Dynamic Aspects of the Rule of Law in the Modern Age”
(Report on the Proceedings of the South-East Asian Pacific Conference of Jurists, Bangkok, Thailand, 15-19
February 1965), 30.
27
Ibid., 60.
28
See Jose Alvarez, “Promoting the ‘Rule of Law’ in Latin America: Problems and Prospects,” George Washington
Journal of International Law and Economics, vol. 25, no. 2 (1991).
29
Brian Z. Tamanaha, “The Lessons of Law-and-Development Studies,” The American Journal of International
Law, vol. 89 (1995), 485.

39
THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

premature, since legal reform can produce important, and necessary, preconditions
for economic growth, but of course “law simply cannot of itself solve the many
problems confronting developing countries.”30

That measured conclusion is reflected in the work done more recently by the
Asian Development Bank (ADB). The ADB conducted a study released in 1997
that analyzed six Asian economies (the PRC, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and
Taiwan) over the time period 1960–1995. The study examined the causal
relationships between legal reform and economic and social development. The
study concluded that the link between legal reform and economic development
had been validated:

[the study supports] a basic premise upon which governments have acted
in both transition and liberalizing economies in enacting significant law
reforms; that law is important to private sector development and, in
particular, to the development of financial and capital markets. The
study also observed, somewhat more tentatively, increased use of the
courts as economic activity increased, increased use of courts to challenge
governmental action, and increased frequency with which private parties
were successful in their disputes with government: these are signs of
the growing importance of legal remedies as economies become more
complex and more impersonal, and of the growing use of the legal
system to enhance the accountability of government.31

Acting on that premise, both the ADB and the World Bank have made support
for legal reform and the Rule of Law major components of their programs in
many countries, including a number of Asian nations. In 1992, the World Bank
made its first loan exclusively dedicated to judicial reform. The Bank has financed
court infrastructure and management training, stocking of legal libraries,
substantive law reform (particularly in commercial and administrative law) and
other legal and judicial reform projects.32

A succinct statement of why the Rule of Law is now generally believed to be a

necessary, if not always sufficient, condition for economic development is set
forth by the Asian Development Bank:

30
Ibid., 486.
31
The Asian Development Bank, “Law and Development at the Asian Development Bank: A Summary of
the Law-Related Development Activities of the Asian Development Bank,” Asian Development Bank
Publication, vol. 54 (1998): 28.
32
Ibrahim F.I. Shihata, “Complementary Reform: Essays on Legal, Judicial and Other Institutional Reforms
Supported by the World Bank,” Kluwer Law International (1997).

40
 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

It is now accepted both by aid agencies and developing country members

that a market economy requires conditions in which the right to property
and the sanctity of contracts are recognized and protected. A legal
system can provide such conditions by protecting and regulating
exchanges of private property, enforcing contracts and ensuring equal
protection to all under the law concerning their rights and property. A
legal system also provides predictability, particularly with respect to the
outcome of disputes, which reduces risks and thus lowers transaction
costs.33

That summary encapsulates the specific elements of the Rule of Law that are
thought germane to economic development:

protection of property rights;

recognition of the right of individuals and corporate entities to freely

enter into contracts, and official legal enforcement of private
contractual commitments;

legal rules regarding market transactions;

equal standing under the law for all individuals, and equal protection
of the rights and property of all individuals; and

fair and efficient, therefore predictable, resolution of economic

disputes, generally through the court system.

If the ADB and other advocates of the Rule of Law and its utility in economic
development are correct that there is now a consensus on those points, it must
not be overlooked that there is a strong ideological undercurrent to such a
consensus. In the long period of struggle between Marxist and capitalist views
of how economies should be organized, neither the obligation of the state to
protect private property rights nor the state’s obligation to enforce privately-
agreed contracts were points of consensus. The apparent consensus on those
points today reflects the acceptance in the vast majority of the nations of the
world of the view that economic development is most likely to occur where
basic free market principles are respected and allowed to operate, with private

33
“Law and Development at the Asian Development Bank…” op.cit., vol. 54, (1998): 4-5.

41
THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

property rights and sanctity of contract being at the core of such free market
principles.

It should also be noted that even Western doctrines of the Rule of Law do not
require governments to subordinate all broad national or social interests to specific
private property interests. Each legal system has its own variant, but most provide
mechanisms whereby a substantial public interest can override a private property
claim. The concept of eminent domain in U.S. law permits a “taking” of private
real estate for public purposes, such as highway construction. And contracts
can be voided on the grounds of public policy, as for example where they are
concords to engage in activity that is criminal or against certain broad public
interests, or where they are “contracts of adhesion” arrived at by parties with
significantly different levels of bargaining power, introducing the prospect that
agreement was coerced, not voluntary.

In those cases, however, the Rule of Law principles of due process and
independent judicial resolution of disputes are relied upon to resolve the conflict
between private property/contract rights and the interests of the government
and society at large. For example, in an eminent domain dispute, the private property
owner is entitled to a due process determination of whether the state has a valid
and compelling interest in the “taking” of his land, and he certainly is entitled to
appropriate, market value compensation for the land if taken.

As with the other core components of the Rule of Law, both this requirement
that private property and contract rights be respected and the corollary mandates
that market transactions be legally protected and enforced and that private
economic disputes should be resolved fairly and efficiently are rich with complex
subsidiary requirements.

It is interesting to note that in many respects the most important of those

subsidiary requirements constitute a command to private sector entities to act in
the same open, transparent and fair manner that is imposed upon government
by the Rule of Law.

Corporate governance is the prime example. Particularly in the wake of the

recent Asian economic crisis, there has been a strong focus on the need for
improved corporate governance. What this means in practice is more open
disclosure of the precise financial condition of corporate entities, including
accurate statements of such facts as the identity of ownership interests,
compensation of executives, the existence of hidden liabilities, open discussion

42
 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

of the workings of the corporate board and other sensitive issues. Overall, it
means better adherence to sound accounting standards to determine the actual
health of private companies. Whether the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting
Principles (GAAP) system or an alternative is adopted, sound corporate
governance requires a high degree of openness and transparency.34

Likewise, it is also conventional wisdom that the recent crisis has revealed the
need for better prudential regulation of the financial sector. Here too the hallmark
of “safety and soundness” regulation in the financial sphere is sufficient disclosure
of financial facts to permit both government regulators and private investors to
make sound, well-informed decisions about whether financial institutions are
being well run and whether investments in them are safe.

Again, a strong focus has been placed, particularly by U.S. Treasury and IMF
officials, on the need for greater openness to equity investment from foreign
sources. This too can be seen as a requirement that the private sector function
in the same fair, non-discriminatory manner as is required of the government
under the Rule of Law (and a parallel requirement that no government regulations
impede such private behavior). That is, in the context of a global economy
where potential investors are not defined on an exclusively national basis, all
such investors must be treated fairly and equally regardless of their national
provenance.35

Indeed, under the concepts of the Rule of Law that are advanced as relevant to
economic development, the proper role of government is premised on adherence
to certain Rule of Law standards by the private sector. That is, government is to
be a consistently fair enforcer of private economic rights and agreements, and a
fair, timely and efficient resolver of private economic disputes, based upon private
economic entities regulating their own conduct according to principles of
transparency, disclosure, sound governance and fair, egalitarian treatment of all
investors and counterparties in the marketplace.

The overarching assumption in the advocacy of the Rule of Law principles as

necessary to economic reform and development is that of the global economy.
As the ADB study results noted, law reform is particularly important in the

34
U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has said that the greatest single contribution of the Western
world to economic development has been the (GAAP) system of reliable accounting principles.
35
This has been a major requirement of IMF “rescue” packages in Thailand, Indonesia and Korea.

43
THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

development of financial and capital markets. And as the World Bank General
Counsel has said, legal mechanisms that ensure transparency, sanctity of contract
and fair dispute resolution “give investors and consumers alike a sense of security
and a confidence in the system that is badly needed for the commitment of
long-term capital.”36

Those official comments reflect the general view today that the models of
economic development that relied on strictly indigenous capital formation and
import substitution have not worked and in any event will not work in the future.
Capital, which is necessary to create economic activity, will be needed at least in
part from foreign sources. In order for such foreign capital to be attracted,
particularly in more long-term, equity forms, the Rule of Law principles of
openness, transparency, and fair treatment of all economic actors, regardless of
nationality, must be observed.

HUMAN AND INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS ARE PROTECTED

As discussed earlier, one of the cornerstones of the development of the legal
theory of the Rule of Law is the concept of the existence of individual rights
and the corollary principle that governments must respect those rights. Specifically
which rights are the entitlement of each individual has been articulated in
numerous documents, notably including the United States’ Bill of Rights, the
French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.

It is important to note that a very wide range of “rights” is endorsed in these

documents, covering not solely political and civil rights but also economic rights.
In the case of the U.S. Bill of Rights, for example, the highest profile rights
enumerated may be those of the First Amendment, including freedom of religion,
freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly and petition
of the government. Other personal rights include protections against arbitrary
action by the government, as in the Fourth Amendment guarantee against
“unreasonable searches and seizures” of homes and personal effects and the
Fifth and Sixth Amendment guarantees of fair criminal proceedings, including
the bar on double jeopardy and compulsory self-incrimination, the right to a
speedy and public jury trial, the right to counsel and the general requirement that
any deprivation of an individual’s liberty and certainly his life can only be imposed
after “due process” of law has sanctioned such state punishment of the individual.

36
Ibrahim, F.I. Shihata, “Complementary Reforms: Essays on Legal, Judicial and Other Institutional Reforms
Supported by the World Bank,” Kluwer Law International (1997): 12

44
 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

But the U.S. Bill of Rights also encompasses economic and property rights,
including the Fifth Amendment guarantee that private property shall not be
“taken for public use, without just compensation,” the preservation of the right
to a jury trial in financially substantial civil suits, and the Third Amendment
prohibition on government “quartering” of soldiers in homes, which is a
protection against arbitrary imposition of public costs on private citizens.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a much broader statement of

rights that reflects the range of abuses of individuals and their rights experienced
in the first half of this century, particularly in Europe. The Universal Declaration
explicitly encompasses not only the basic human and political rights of the U.S.
Bill of Rights but also embraces rights against invidious discrimination based on
race, ethnicity or gender. The Universal Declaration also includes fundamental
economic rights, including the rights to fair wages and to non-discriminatory
treatment in economic relations and the right to a sufficient standard of living.37

In the case of all of these rights, the focus of these documents is primarily that
of restraining governmental behavior so that governments do not deprive
individuals of their rights. What is sometimes overlooked, however, is that these
documents, particularly the Universal Declaration, also entail an affirmative
mandate to governments to create an enabling environment for the protection
of human rights, interceding where necessary to prevent the violation of human
rights of one group or individual by the actions of others.

In recent years, the focus of the human rights debates that have prevailed in a
range of international fora has been on the performance of various governments
in meeting those obligations to respect the human rights of their citizens. A
major series of conferences under the auspices of the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) has articulated, beginning with the Helsinki
Final Act, the responsibilities of governments to honor and protect individual
and community-based human rights. While these conferences began as a delayed
outgrowth of the Second World War and involved the regularization of the
relations between the then-Soviet Union and the nations of Western Europe
and the United States, the CSCE set up a framework of attention to and
monitoring of human rights abuses, which has been influential globally. In
formal legal terms, the CSCE rights framework provides the legal basis for

37
See Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

45
THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

countries to challenge the human rights performance of other countries

notwithstanding the general international norm of non-interference in domestic
political matters.38

As the public international discussion of the performance of various governments

in the human rights arena has grown over the years, it has also become more
prominent as part of numerous bilateral and multilateral meetings and
negotiations on other topics, and it has become the subject of contention between
governments. Examples abound, but certainly include the numerous occasions
on which multilateral and bilateral trade agreements and concessions have been
conditioned, or have been threatened to be conditioned, on specific governments’
conduct in the arena of human rights protections.

This high-profile attention to the human rights records of specific governments

has also occasioned criticism, some of it from Asian leaders, of the focus on
human rights as being either inconsistent with “Asian values,” or, alternatively, as
a case of Western cultural imperialism. One thoughtful observer of this debate
persuasively argues that the differences between the “Western” and “Asian” view
of human rights can easily be exaggerated, in particular because the fault lines of
this debate occur within both Western and Asian cultures, not just between the
two regions.

Citing survey data identifying the most important “societal values” of East Asians
and Americans, Michael Freeman points out that two values in particular are
cherished by both East Asians and Americans: freedom of expression and the
accountability of public officials. Other values are shared or overlapping. The
inclusion on the Asian list of “an orderly society,” “respect for authority” and
“societal harmony” contrasts with the American citation of personal freedom
and individual rights. But as he points out:

The problem of balancing order and rights has continuously been a

central issue of Western political thought since the seventeenth Century.
Conservatives tend to place more weight on order and liberals more
weight on rights. There are also differences of emphasis among Western
societies, some emphasizing rights more than others. [Critics of

38
For a broad discussion of the CSCE human rights system and its importance to the protection of human
rights, see Thomas Buergenthal, “The CSCE Rights System,” George Washington Journal of International Law and
Economics, vol. 25, no. 2 (1991), 333.

46
 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

“Western” values concentrate] on the USA without noting that its strong
emphasis on individual rights is exceptional among the Western political
cultures.39

He goes on to point out that Western individualism can be exaggerated,

constrained as it is by “such collectivities as family, economic enterprise and
nation.”40

What should be emphasized is that the principles of the Rule of Law provide
for mechanisms for that debate—over the proper boundaries of the rights of
the individual and the prerogatives of the larger society—to be resolved in a
manner that is consistent with the values and beliefs of each society. Not even
the Magna Carta asserted that no man would be deprived by the government of
his liberty or his property; instead, it contemplated such deprivation, while
guaranteeing that none would be so deprived without due process of law, including
consultation with his peers.

In the criminal context, such procedural rights as public trials, jury trials, the
right to confront accusers, the prohibition against self-incrimination (seen, among
other things, as an invitation to prosecutorial torture) all go in the direction of
insuring that

conviction and punishment for criminal offenses are imposed by the state only
in a manner, and following procedures, that are generally agreed upon by the
society at large to be fair and just.

In the civil and economic context, the dictates of the Rule of Law likewise
insure against arbitrary action by the state against the economic and property
rights of the individual. In so doing, these civil and criminal procedural rights
and rules become the guarantor of the substantive human rights of individuals.
Political rights such as the right of free expression and personal, intellectual
rights such as freedom of religion and the right of intellectual inquiry are most
likely to be protected where a government hostile to the particular free expression
or religious belief of an individual has no mechanism to attack them that is not
limited by these procedural restraints.

39
Michael Freeman, “Human Rights, Democracy and ‘Asian Values’,” The Pacific Review, vol. 9, no. 3 (1996),
355 #5.
40
Ibid., 355.

47
THE RULE OF LAW: A Lexicon for Policy Makers

LAW CAN BE CHANGED BY AN ESTABLISHED PROCESS WHICH

ITSELF IS TRANSPARENT AND ACCESSIBLE TO ALL
The common notion of rules and laws contains an assumption of inflexibility.
Perhaps from childhood, we are taught that rules must be strictly enforced, lest
they lose their validity and disciplinary power. And certainly many of the precepts
of the Rule of Law already discussed ratify that notion. The reliability,
dependability and predictability that is associated with fair, equitable and consistent
application of the law by official authorities all connote a certain rigidity in the
structure and enforcement of the law.

Yet one of the necessary components of the Rule of Law is a process by which
the law itself can be changed, consistent with the values of transparency,
accessibility to all and predictability. Change in the law can be required for a
number of reasons. Circumstances can change so that a law is rendered
meaningless or even counterproductive; social mores can change so that conduct
once deserving of sanction or punishment no longer seems offensive; and
particularly in the economic realm, technological and other changes can introduce
whole new situations simply not contemplated by existing law but which must
be addressed.

Also, there is the need for a certain element of flexibility within the framework
of existing law, given the infinite number of factual situations and variations in
circumstances that can be the subject of a legal dispute, whether in the civil or
criminal context. Indeed, it is interesting to note that in the definition of the
Rule of Law offered by the World Bank in the context of its work on governance,
three of the five elements noted are concerned with this issue of flexibility and
change. Those three are: 1) mechanisms must exist “to allow for departure from
[the established rules] as needed, according to established procedures”; 2)
“conflicts in the application of rules can be resolved through binding decisions
of an independent judicial or arbitral body”; and 3) “there are known procedures
for amending the rules when they no longer serve their purpose.”41

Contrary to being inflexible, the Rule of Law carries with it the capacity to promote
the orderly evolution of the law. At the constitutional level, as mentioned earlier,
the doctrines of constitutionalism set a high bar for any changes in the organic
document of the government. That said, it must remain possible for change

41
Ibrahim, F.I. Shihata, “Complementary Reforms: Essays on Legal, Judicial and Other Institutional Reforms
Supported by the World Bank,” Kluver Law International (1997): 5 f(1).

48
 The Core Components of the Rule of Law

even in the constitution, and the constitution itself should provide for an orderly
mechanism to do so.

Below the level of constitutional change, the mechanisms discussed in earlier

chapters address the means by which law can be changed in a manner that remains
predictable and consistent with the right of all to access and influence such
changes.

Legislatures, which as a matter of vocational definition are engaged in changing

law, should employ a range of mechanisms to ensure that their proceedings are
open or available to the public, that comments and opinions from the public are
received and considered, and that the changes in law that are finally promulgated
are duly published and disseminated in a fashion consistent with the goal of
widespread public knowledge of the law.

Executive branches likewise should employ such procedural techniques as notice

and comment rulemaking to involve all affected members of the public in the
contemplation of changes in regulations and interpretations of statutes.

The courts also have built-in mechanisms for change. Appellate review gives
guidance to lower courts on evolutionary changes in legal interpretations. Where
matters of first impression are decided differently in different jurisdictions, such
conflicts between the views in different jurisdictions can percolate up through
the appellate system to be resolved at a higher level. And courts are bound by
their own rules of procedure, which can themselves be changed as needed, ideally
with open consideration of the changes and input from the private bar and
others who may be affected.

In sum, adherence to the Rule of Law should not be inconsistent with or restrict
the kind of growth and evolution in public affairs that are increasingly necessary
given the pace of modern technological and social change. Instead, respect for
the Rule of Law is the best guarantor that as such changes in the administration
of public affairs inevitably do occur, they remain consistent with the larger values
of individual rights, constitutionalism and restraints on arbitrary actions by
governments, which are the underlying essence of the Rule of Law.

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